by Omar (@siegarettes)
With this year’s Fatal Frame being kind of a wash, it felt fortunate that I stumbled across DreadOut, a low key horror game by the small Indonesian developers Digital Happiness, with heavy influences to the series. The transplant of Fatal Frame’s signature mechanic from a traditional Japanese setting into an Indonesian one, had my attention. Could the efforts of a smaller team translate the atmosphere of Fatal Frame to Indonesia? I’ll tell you once my hands stop shaking long enough to write this.
I should make one thing clear: DreadOut in no way has the sheer spectacle and production values of a series as big as Fatal Frame. What it does have is spirit. Quite a lot of them. In fact, one of the largest draws for me was exploring some of the mythology of the country. Horror works best with the unknown. And while DreadOut definitely shares elements with other East Asian mythologies, (however you want to define that) its unique stories drew me in. From the spirit of a man who gained wealth through black magicks, to the spirit whose faces moved between several people who offered themselves up for immortality, the souls on display here absorbed me in terror and intrigue.
You’ll spend a lot of time with them as well, as they tend to haunt certain areas you move through. Combined with the need to search for clues for rather obtuse puzzles, it results in a constant sense of anxiety, punctuated by realization that the shadow down the hall is slowly advancing towards you.
This is where DreadOut works best. The darkness works well to mask the flaws in their representation of the Silent Hill-esque town. Between the low poly models and muddled textures, the game has the look of an early PS2 game, where developers were still in the transition period of understanding what they had to work with. The high resolutions of today simply exaggerate those flaws. Still, for a team of this size, from a place that doesn’t have the massive amount of resources that even small US teams receive, it’s actually quite impressive. Provided you look at it in the right light.
There’s a sense of place to the town you explore, and the team at Digital Happiness took their time to populate the space with little details that make it feel alive. The good old newspaper clipouts return here, alongside posters for bands and local events. It captures the alienation of distance that’s common in small town horror movies. Really, that’s what makes DreadOut work. I could complain about technical problems and weird design decisions, but it doesn’t matter when you settle into it.
I really dreaded the thought of playing this game, a feeling that usually gets reserved for games like Silent Hill, Amnesia, or Siren. DreadOut turned me into a muttering nervous wreck, and now I want to inflict that feeling on to you. Consider this a recommendation.